At night one of the things I like to do is see what is the furthest AM broadcast station I can aquire. I am only working the AM broadcast band when I do this and dont want to say hey I picked up China Radio from Beijing at 200.000 watts when I can try and tune a "local" station say in Colac at 2000 watts. Needless to say the Beijing signal aimed at the pacific area by bouncing it off the ionosphere is much much stronger then Colac...

Reciever is Realistic DX-150B FET SW Receiver with a 20' long wire aerial about 10' off the ground running North to south horizontally.

For those that dont know the quality strength etc is shown as a rating out of five, 5/5 is the best and 1/5 is the worst.

Strength is the received power

Noise is atmospheric interference

Fading is the signal fading in and out, this affects the overall volume

Interferance are signals from other transmitters on the same frequency or are very close to it

Overall Quality is a combination of all of the above and how "listenable" the station is

ERP is short for Emitted Radiated Power it can be different at certain directions from the transmitter depending on the broadcast pattern. It might be omnidirectional and be as strong in all directions or it might transmit north south or east west. For example the weather is broadcast to shipping from two transmitters, one in Queensland doing the east coast and one in WA doing the west coast, they are set up to transmit north to south to follow the coastline and both are inland with the Qld one near the NT border not the coast